I am a designer and developer and content strategist. I use my experience as a magazine art director and web editor to help publishers, marketers, non-profits and self-branded individuals tell their stories in words and images. I follow all of the technologies that relate to the content business and try to identify the opportunities and pitfalls that these technologies pose. At the same time I am immersed in certain sectors through my content practice and am always looking to find connections between the worlds of neurology, economics, entertainment, travel and mobile technology. I live near the appropriately-scaled metropolis of Portland, Maine, and participate in its innovation economy (more stories at liveworkportland.org. A more complete bio and samples of my design work live at wingandko.com.

Will There Be Two iPhone 6L Phablet Models, One With A Sapphire Screen?

Last Friday, another French tech blog, iGen.fr, posted screen shots of product design specifications for the two new iPhone 6 models apparently now in production. These literally appear to be photos taken off of a computer screen, raster lines, nondescript office background and all. For those with a forensic bent I can say that the raster patterns are distinctly different in each image as would be consistent with quickly taken camera-phone photos taken at slightly different angles. One could certainly recreate such an effect in Photoshop with filters, but there is no obvious sign of wholesale fakery.

I saw the images, but didn’t make much of them. My colleague Gordon Kelly, however, saw their news value and hundreds of thousands of readers apparently agreed. Reading his story, and seeing the popular reaction, made me look deeper at the three screens Mickaël Bazoge of iGen posted. Particularly, I was interested in the third screen in the post. Here is what I found:

First, let’s look at the information in the footer of the screens. It can be decoded to indicate the date of the design (2014.2.12), the company (IDPBG) and the department (PD-HH). The year.month.date format is standard in China, so that dates this design specification back to February. Integrated Digital Product Business Group (IDPBG) is a division of Foxconn that is responsible for manufacturing the iPhone. PD stands for “Product Design” and HH for “Hon Hai PrecisionHon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.,” the parent company that trades as Foxconn Technology Group. This all seems consistent with an internal slide deck produced by the product design team.

Second, the slide represents the three iPhone models that by now all AppleApple-watchers are familiar with: the existing 4-inch iPhone 5S, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6L (assuming that’s what the big one will be called.) Two interesting points here. First, the three models are represented by code names: ‘N51’ for the 4-inch, ‘N61’ for the 4.7-inch, and the ‘N56’ for the 5.5-inch. Notice that the bigger iPhone has a lower number. This could mean nothing, or it could mean that the design conceptualization for the iPhone phablet actually preceded the 4.7″ version.

The more interesting detail is that N56 has two prototype versions with slightly different specs. “Proto1″ is .o7 mm shorter, .67 mm narrower, .1 mm thinner and 20 grams lighter than “proto2.” What would account for a fork of two different prototypes at least 7 months before the actual product announcement?

Here’s a speculation. My guess. If I am wrong, blame me. If you look at the Corning webpage that compares Gorilla Glass (the current iPhone screen material) to sapphire, you see that the company claims that, “Sapphire is 67 percent heavier than Gorilla Glass” and “more difficult to process, which can be an issue when trying to achieve comparable thinness to Gorilla Glass.” Obviously CorningCorning has an interest in representing its product in a favorable light, and until an Apple device with a sapphire screen is released we will not know how GT Advanced Systems and Apple were able to finesse these issues of weight and thinness.

Remember, as well, that it was recently revealed that Apple’s attempt to make its screens minutely thinner through use of a single backlight film has not worked out and it has retooled the iPhone 6 production line to use of a second film as it does in current iPhone models. This gambit could have had something to do with trying to counterbalance the extra thickness and weight of a sapphire screen.

On the sapphire side of the story, I reported last month that GT advanced has a new process that allows very thin slices of sapphire to be laminated on glass, thus possibly getting around the weight, thickness and cost issues of its use in iPhone screens. Although the company released a video showing the process in action, it is unclear if it could possibly be ready for this iPhone cycle or whether, as I suggested in that story, it will leave the sapphire for the “S” model of the iPhone 6.

The question raised by the iGen leak is whether Apple has been double tracking the iPhone phablet all along with the goal of having a premium sapphire-screened version that would be slightly larger and heavier, or whether these were two roads only one of which is taken. The possibility of two versions means that for iPhone fans that need to be the first to have a sapphire screen, there may still be hope for 2014.

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